independent rooms with beam and era

No, not really. The Beam and the Eras need to be bonded (not grouped) for surround. And the only way to play just through the Eras is to constantly unbond them from the Beam and set them up in stereo. Which is impractical every time, although possible.

Most people just play music to the one ‘room’, and set their surrounds to ‘full’ rather than Ambient, so you get a normal stereo output from them when playing music. You also have the option of controlling the difference in volume, to a point,  between the Eras and the Beam while streaming music, or playing TV sounds. 

This question comes up a lot, and in thinking about why people want this functionality, I asked myself what other manufacturer does this? Even those with traditional AVRs?

Someone correct me if I am wrong because I am older now and even though I still love to research things, I have yet to come across any system that, once bonded, can be unbonded with a simple toggle and have the surrounds be set to a stereo pair… then re-bonded.

Just a short rant, but I wish more users would educate themselves before purchasing..

I was able to do that years ago with a Proceed surround processor.  The difference, of course, there were front L/R speakers as part of the system & the speakers were wired.  
 

Still don’t know why anyone would want to listen to speakers behind them.

AVR receivers that I’ve owned allowed the front L/R to be used as standard stereo speakers through a “pass through” or “Native” mode that plays each source as is.  I’ve also seen various “5/7 channel stereo” modes that play “stereo” using all speakers, similar to the “Full” setting in Sonos.  I’ve never seen a mode that uses surrounds as the only stereo pair.